Handbook on Japanning: 2nd Edition eBook

When brick ovens are employed they must be lined with
sheet-iron, and in these very rare circumstances where
gas is not available, the stove can be heated with
coal or wood, which will, of course, involve a total
alteration in the structural arrangements. I have
not given the details here, as I do not think the
necessity will ever arise for their use, and for the
same reason I have refrained from giving the particulars
for heating by steam and electricity, or the other
methods which have been adopted by various workers,
as there is no question but that a gas stove or oven,
as described, is about the best and handiest for jobbers
or amateurs.

MODERN JAPANNING AND ENAMELLING STOVES.

The modern japanning and enamelling stove consists
of a compartment capable of being heated to any desired
temperature, say 100 deg. to 400 deg. F., and
at the same time, except as regards ventilation, capable
of being hermetically sealed so as to prevent access
of dust, soot, and dirt of all kinds to mar the beauty
and lustre of the object being enamelled or japanned.
Such a stove may be heated—­

3. By steam or hot-water pipes, coils of which
circulate round the interior of the stove or under
the floor.

Such ovens may be either permanent, that is, built
into masonry, or portable.

[Illustration: Fig. 5.—­Greuzburg’s
Japanning Oven.]

1. Stoves heated by direct fire.—­These
were, of course, the form in which japanning ovens
were constructed somewhat after the style of a drying
kiln. Fig. 5, Greuzburg’s japanning oven
heated on the outside by hot gases from furnace.
The oven is built into brickwork, and the hot gases
circulate in the flues between the brickwork and the
oven, and its erection and the arrangement of the
heating flues are a bricklayer’s job. Coke
containing much sulphur is objectionable as a fuel
for enamel stoves Mr. Dickson emphasizes this very
forcibly. He says: “In the days when
stoves were heated by coke furnaces, and the heat
distributed by the flues, the principal trouble was
the escape of fumes of sulphur which caused dire disaster
to all the enamels by entering into their composition
and preventing their ever drying, not to speak of
hardening. I have known enamels to be in the stoves
with heat to 270 deg. for two and three days, and
then be soft. The sulphur also caused the enamels
to crack in a peculiar manner, much like a crocodile
skin, and work so affected could never be made satisfactory,
for here again we come back to the first principle,
that if the foundation be not good, the superstructure
can never be permanent. The enamels, being permeated
with sulphur and other products from the coke, could
never be made satisfactory, and the only way was to
clean it all off. The other principal troubles
are the blowing of the work in air bubbles, which
is caused mainly by the heat being too suddenly applied
to the articles, but these are very small matters
to the experienced craftsman.”